


Blesssed with the stars

by marras



Series: wishing well [2]
Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-03
Updated: 2015-06-03
Packaged: 2018-04-02 17:40:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,003
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4068766
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/marras/pseuds/marras
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Goodbyes are hard,<br/>and I wonder,<br/>is it harder to be the one to leave<br/>or the one to stay?</p><p>But no matter what,<br/>I hope you'll wish me well,<br/>on the wishing well.</p><p>Or:<br/>With less than eight hours left before he leaves the country and the love of his life behind for a good half a year, Marco is at loss of what he should do. Should he risk it everything with a confession, or leave it all behind as friends?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Blesssed with the stars

**Author's Note:**

> Chronically a prequel to ‘Wishing well on the wishing well’, but I strongly recommend reading this after it!  
> This is not important, but if you are curious, this is the song Marco mentions Jean listening to: [[x]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2H77mv8R7ic)

Jean Kirstein.  
18 years, three months.  
My best friend since childhood.  
The one that I love.  
  
He was the one to name me the star boy, in childhood games in the sand box, after star gazing the first constellation he ever learned from my skin.  
_Ha, it’s the big dipper!_ he had beamed, his five-year-old smile missing a tooth or a few as his round little fingers pointed at me.  
_What do you mean, Jean?_ , I asked him, confused as I gazed up to the bright summer sky, then back to the finger pointing at me.  
_There, right there_ , he exclaimed, poking at my shoulder. _On your skin, look, it’s big dipper!_  
And so there was, by his little fingertip, a series of seven freckles that formed the constellation I knew so well.  
_Oh_ , I breathed out, surprised. _It is!_  
_You are a star boy!_ Jean had laughed, smiling. _You are a star boy, Marco!_  
  
The name stuck, even through the years, even when the freckles disappeared for winter and never came back exactly the same. Not before I turned eighteen and met with a tattooist, a childhood picture on my hands and a wish for a tattoo. So it came that the seven little stars now rested on my shoulder as a more permanent constellation than any freckles could have formed, and it felt great, so great.  
  
Once a star boy,  
always a star boy.  
  
Jean’s face had been worth the pain as I flashed him the still fresh tattoo, excitement and something, I wasn’t even sure what, flashing across his features as I said, _I will now be a star boy for ever_. He told me he liked it, asked if it hurt. His voice somewhat choked and I didn’t know what to think.  
  
_Were you worried? Disgusted?_  
_Shamed of the way it bonded us?_  
_Did you not want me to be your star boy anymore?_  
_Not in such a permanent way?_  
  
When we were six, we stood by the old wishing well just outside the town, on a meadow slowly drowning in the vast green forest now that it had been mostly abandoned. _But the power is still here_ , our mothers reassured us, pushing little coins to our chubby child hands. _Now, go and make a wish, boys._  
We looked at each other, Jean and me, and we asked, _but what do we wish for?_  
_What ever you want, dears._  
_Then I want to be Marco’s best friend for ever._  
_Me too! I want to be yours!_  
_Well_ , my mother had laughed. _Isn’t that just a fine wish on itself?_  
So we stood side by side, our little backs turned to the well, in a tiny salute.  
We threw the coins, said, _I want to be his best friend forever_ , and waited, suspense thick on the air until the two little splashes told us that we had succeed.  
After that, our mother took us for ice cream and all was well.  
  
Best friends forever, or so it was supposed to be.  
But I ruined it.  
  
I realised I was gay when I was twelve and I looked at my best friend and I wanted to kiss him. When I looked at Jean, on the grass where we laid, exhausted from running around in a game of tag, his shaggy hair sticking to his damp forehead and his cheeks red, lips open in a panting smile.  
I also realised that he wasn’t gay when I was twelve, not with the way he talked about girls. Of how his mum kept bugging him about getting a girlfriend, since his little brother already had one, and he whined to me about how _annoying_ it was to listen to it the same old thing day after day.  
_Well, will you take one home someday?_ I asked him. Jean shrugged.  
_Probably? Isn’t that how it goes?_  
_I guess._  
_What about you? Do you have a girlfriend?_  
_No._  
_Any girl you wanna date?_  
_None._  
_Alright._  
  
That was all of it, and nothing more.  
I think he understood. I think he didn’t care.  
At least, as long as I wasn’t coming onto him.  
And that was the problem, really. Because I really wanted to.  
  
So when I was sixteen, I stopped going to swim with Jean. For the sake of our friendship, for if _thinking_ about him naked was sure to give me a hard on, I wasn’t willing to risk what would happen if I actually saw it again - the way water would hit his unclothed skin, how it’d travel down in droplets, licking his skin in places I couldn’t even dream of touching.  
And I guess, even if I could stand seeing it, I still couldn’t do it.  
Not when I felt that I had become a stalker of my best friend,  
and I was stalking,  
stalking  
stalking stalking _stalking_  
every little sight of his bare skin when his shirt rode up.  
  
The worst was when I realised he had started growing a happy trail when he once pulled his shirt off when changing onto his pyjamas.  
There was _nothing “happy”_ in that trail of hair for me.  
That fucking happy trail _ruined me_ ,  
ruined _any hope_ I had had for turning this _thing_ back to _platonic_.  
Killing any hope I had had for it just having been a passing phase.  
  
Needless to say, the Jean of my fantasies wore a happy trail of the colour of his undercut from there onwards.  
Also needless to say was how I grew more and more disgusted with myself over it.  
Yet, I couldn’t stop it, addicted to all the could be would bes.  
  
At least I had the decency to stop looking at the real Jean when he was naked, shirtless, anywhere in between.  
I think he noticed, but he didn’t ask.  
Maybe he had noticed how I looked at him.  
I wasn’t brave enough to ask.  
So I retreated back to the ground where I couldn’t see him naked.  
Back to the ground that never even existed for childhood friends who used to go skinny dipping every summer.  
But I had to, for the sake of us.  
For the sake of that wish, that little promise.  
‘I want to be best friends for ever’, and _eat my ass._  
I wanna suck his dick, no bro full fucking homo.  
There was nothing friendly nor innocent about that.  
  
Nor about his name on my lips,  
whispered to the pillow time after time,  
for ears that should never hear,  
in barely whispered ‘I love you’s when he was fast asleep,  
hands that almost touched, but never really,  
sparks on my guts when he smiled at me,  
the way his lips looked as he said ‘ _star boy_ ’  
the way I wanted to make him laugh for ever  
none of that, none of it was platonic anymore.  
  
Because everywhere, all the time, I wished he’d lean in and kiss me when he gazed at me, that he’d take my hand when we high five’d, that he’d hug me just a bit longer, just a bit harder.  
But he didn’t.  
And neither did I.  
I couldn’t.  
  
But unsaid words hurt, so I had to say it to him. Somehow. Without him finding out.  
So on my last winter of middle school, Monday, March 3rd. In school’s bigger hallway, I did it.  
  
Jean looked so peaceful that day, his eyes set to the outside through the school’s glass doors, on the snow slowly falling down. It was afternoon break, and he was waiting for me at our usual spot by the clothes rack, leaning onto it. Wearing his little white headphones, the ones I had failed to notice often, with countless memories of trying to speak to him without him realising as he was lost in his own little private world inside the music.  
  
It was the perfect excuse, really.  
The perfect explanation for anything.  
The perfect opportunity.  
  
So I stepped in, settling by his side to lean on that shitty rack, Jean only acknowledging my presence with a gaze and a nod when my shoulder bumped into his. I could hear the music faintly, that one song he loved about dark towers and hopeless loves, or so I had understood.  
“Hey, Jean”, I offered quietly. “You know that I have always loved you like a brother, right?”  
No reply, no reaction. _Good_.  
“I just kind of wanted to tell you that I love you the other, way less brotherly and way more boyfriendly way, too.”  
Still nothing. I turned to look at him.  
“So what do you say?”  
Jean caught my stare, turning to me and yanking the headphone out of his ear, batting his eyelashes a few times. The singer sang of dark towers to my ears now, too.  
“Sorry, I couldn’t hear you - what was that?”  
“Mmm”, I hummed, shaking my head at his confusion. “It was nothing important.”  
Jean gave me a long look, knitting his brows together and squinting his pretty, pretty eyes.  
“God you are weird sometimes”, he then declared, tugging his headphones back into their place.  
“I know”, I whispered, as a reply to no one since he couldn’t even hear me anymore.  
  
Blinking away the burning tears that wanted to run free.  
What a fucking coward I was  
and yet, I had hoped he would have heard me.  
  
So this is where it had left me, two and half years later. Sitting alone on that damned wishing well dressed up in the best I could pull of with half of my possessions steadily packed away to the two big suitcases that had stared at me so demandingly in the corner of my room that I just had to leave. Knowing what they meant, what they promised and what they took away.  
  
I ditched my last night with my family, took a walk and ended up on the well of promises that I wanted to break but couldn’t, a phone in my hand with the wonder of _should I?_  
It could ruin it all.  
But in the other hand, I could run away so soon, to another country, in just a few hours I’d be gone. And I wouldn’t have to see his face if it all went to hell, not for another half a year.  
I sighed, scaring the curious little squirrel that had slowly approached me for the last half an hour or so that I had spent pondering what ifs and could bes, time I had wasted being a coward once more.  
  
I didn’t believe in giving up, but I didn’t really believe in trying again either.  
But sometimes, there are things that you can’t give up and that you’ll have to try for again, even if you know that you probably won’t succeed. You just have to try, once more, to see if the blindingly small chance to succeed could turn true, if it could be your saving grace.  
And it wasn’t like I ever really tried, not this time.  
  
Jean was something that was worth trying for.  
The right to hold his hand,  
the right kiss him,  
the right to moan his name,  
it was all worth a second try.  
A real try, this time.  
  
So I unlocked my phone with nervous fingers and called him. Even thought it was night, and it was too late, even if I was supposed to be with my family. Even so.  
  
Because no matter what,  
no matter how it’d turn out,  
I was blessed with these stars.  
  
Stars that made me his,  
his, and no one else’s.  
To be owned by him,  
that was better than nothing,  
in the bitter world of defeat.  
  
So no matter what,  
I was a star boy.  
Star boy once,  
star boy till the day I’ll die.  
  
Wish me well, wishing well.  
For this is my last shot, my last try.  
My only shot.  
Wish me well, wishing well.  
  
_Marco?_  
_Hey Jea_ n, I whispered, gazing up to lone star in the blue sky. _Remember that old wishing well?_

**Author's Note:**

> Once more, if someone was curious, [[this is the song Jean listened to]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2H77mv8R7ic) :) (no I'm not trying to convert you onto listening this band that I love what are you talking about?)
> 
> So. I honestly never meant to write anything else to the star boy universe after Wishing Well, but then people liked it so much?? I got so many lovely messages on tumblr and twitter and I thought, damn, it'd be a shame not to write a little more then. Since I already had the idea and all. So here we are!
> 
> I hope that you enjoyed it ^^ As always feedback is extremely appreciated ♥ You can also find me on [[tumblr]](http://salangaani.tumblr.com/) and [[twitter]](https://twitter.com/salangaani_).


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